Crawford: 30 ingredients to cook up an old-fashioned summer

As the school year wanes and summer approaches, I find myself done. Done with homework and after-school activities, with rushing to and fro. I’m exhausted, as parent and teacher both. But I’m also tired of my everyday routine, the things I’ve gotten into the habit of doing before my head hits the pillow each night.

No matter where we are in life, when summer rolls around, the days are different. It’s as if long ago, summer wound itself into the helix of our childhood DNA, and we feel it still.

Even in cold places, summer makes itself known. Here, in the South, it does so with birdsong, cricket-thrum, lush green trees, thunderstorms, hot sun, the whirr of ceiling fans, and sweat. All over our planet, in summer, different animals emerge. New plants bloom. The wind shifts, and the air smells like promise.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, in “The Great Gatsby,” wrote, “And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees … I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”

Summer makes a promise: that anything is possible. June is as much a starting point as January. Any kid knows this (and we are all kids deep down, where it counts).

The writer Deb Caletti, in her Young Adult novel “Honey, Baby, Sweetheart,” writes that, “Summer, after all, is a time when wonderful things can happen to quiet people. For those few months, you’re not required to be who everyone thinks you are, and that cut-grass smell in the air and the chance to dive into the deep end of a pool give you a courage you don’t have the rest of the year. Summer just opens the door and lets you out.”

Those weeks away from school can be a relief for many children and teenagers. And while we grownups may have our usual responsibilities, summer still offers the chance to relax our grip on the roles to which we hold so tight during the year.

Here’s what I think. I think we’re tired. A bit worn down by the world. Weary with the routine of our lives, though we may love that routine. But if we can’t find magic in summertime, we won’t find it anywhere.

Let’s have an old-fashioned summer! Let’s, when our responsibilities are done — and sometimes when they’re not — put down our phones and iPads. Let’s stop streaming Netflix, or scrolling through our phones out of habit, and instead do summertime stuff.

The journalist Charles Bowden once wrote that, “Summer is always the best of what might be.” “What might be” can be simple, especially in summer.

Here’s my recipe for an old-fashioned summer. Add your own ingredients. Scratch mine. See what happens.

Here we go:

1. Play a board game.

2. Sit on your stoop, on your porch, or in the middle of your driveway. Drink something icy cold.

3. Go on a creek hike/rock hop.

4. Catch lightning bugs. (Ventilate your jars.)

5. Splurge on a real movie. Buy the popcorn and Coke.

6. Ride a bike — not for exercise, but for the fun of it.

7. Roast S’mores, even if it’s in your microwave.

8. Light a sparkler. Write your name in the air.

9. Check out a stack of library books. Read any chance you get.

10. Eat an ice cream cone. Buy one for the next person in line.

11. Walk through grass in your bare feet.

12. Have a potluck with your neighbors.

13. Draw on your driveway with chalk.

14. Pick a town. Play tourist.

15. Walk outside at night, and look for constellations.

16. Find a swimming hole or pool. Do a cannonball.

17. Hold hands with someone.

18. Lie on your back and look for shapes in the clouds.

19. Listen to live music.

20. Color in an adult coloring book.

21. Take your shoes off. Dip your feet in a creek, pond, lake, or the ocean.

22. Wake up early and watch the sunrise from a great spot. Or, watch the sunset, and walk home in the warm dark, flashlight in hand.

23. Call an old summer friend. Remind him/her of a memory you share.

24. Attend a hometown baseball game.

25. Skip rocks.

26. Play charades.

27. Open the windows during an afternoon thunderstorm.

28. Drive with the windows down, playing your favorite song from high school as loud as you can stand it.

29. Write a real letter, and send it to a friend.

30. Do one thing that reminds you of your favorite summer. It could be sipping a fountain drink, riding bikes at dusk, playing cards on your back porch, or playing hooky to go fishing.

Enjoy! Summer has an infinite capacity for magic. It is lush with small surprise.

Katherine Scott Crawford is a novelist, college professor, hiker and mom who lives in Western North Carolina. Write to her at thewritingscott@gmail.com.